LIFE IN THE PINES: A family struggles to survive

Oct. 15—Editor's Note: At 6 p.m. Friday, as the Record-Eagle was preparing to publish this story, the Perryman family moved into one of the 11 family suites at the Goodwill Inn. They had been on a waiting list for one of the suites since the beginning of September. This story chronicles the difficulties the Perrymans endured while living in the Pines with their four children. Other residents of the Pines, including children, have yet to find temporary or permanent housing.

TRAVERSE CITY — For the last month and a half, Christen Perryman lived just a short walk from the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, a $120 million historic renovation project that is one of Traverse City's crown jewels. A symbol of gentrified affluence and one of the city's top tourist attractions, the Commons features an array of pricey boutiques, galleries and restaurants at which Perryman likely will never shop or eat.

Until Friday, Perryman, 27, was living with her 37-year-old husband, Eric, and their four young children — including their 17-month-old daughter — in the Pines, a squalid urban tent city on the south side of 11th Street.

Along with approximately 85 other homeless people, the Perrymans were living a hand-to-mouth existence that would horrify most of the downtown commuters who whiz by them on Division Street every day.

During her stay in the Pines, Christen Perryman was an atypical tiger mom, rousting her unhappy 7- and 8-year-old sons from their sleeping bags on a cold autumn morning to catch the bus to Willow Hill Elementary School. She also hawked over her 4-year-old daughter and her baby sister as they played in the dirt, insisting they remain close by and not interact with the disheveled men who roam the tent city, muttering to themselves, occasionally yelling and sometimes talking to trees.

Originally from Mesick, Christen Perryman had been living in the Pines since the beginning of September after the Perrymans made an ill-fated trip to Louisiana in March to visit Eric's family. She said they returned to Traverse City by bus at the end of August — $1,050 poorer — after their car broke down. They faced eviction after getting behind on their rent and they were unable to find jobs or social services to help them.

"We knew we were going to be homeless and have to start over somewhere, but it's very dangerous out here," Christen Perryman said. "You've got people on drugs; you've got sex offenders here. I have to watch my kids all the time. It sucks because our kids are seeing things they shouldn't see this early in life."

Wendy McClain, another Pines resident who said she has been living there for three years after her mother died, said people in this tent city learn quickly to mind their own business. "There's people in here carrying machetes, carrying sticks, carrying axes," she said. "If you piss off somebody, they might burn your tent down. They don't play in here."

The day before she was interviewed by a Record-Eagle reporter, McClain, 48, said she watched a homeless resident pummel another man after accusing him of fondling his girlfriend. She said no one called the police because no one wants to be identified as a snitch. McClain pointed to the victim, who was sitting on a battered chair a few tents away. Asked where his assailant was, she pointed in the direction of another tent. "He's over there," she said.

Acting City Manager Nate Geinzer considers the Pines to be so dangerous that he issued an order to city employees in July that they should not enter the area along the so-called Men's Trail without a police escort. Geinzer issued the directive, he wrote in a memo to city officials, after he and other officials who were on a walking tour of the Pines endured "a verbal and vulgar intimidation effort" in which a homeless man who was brandishing a stick yelled at and threatened the group even though they were accompanied by police officers.

Since the beginning of the year, four homeless people have been found dead in Grand Traverse County, two of whom were living in the Pines, according to Ashley Halladay-Schmandt, director of the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness.

The two Pines residents who died included 60-year-old Dale Lee Carpenter, who died on May 30 alone and unmourned in his tent. Carpenter's death was never publicly acknowledged by the police. The Record-Eagle learned about it while reviewing the results of a public records request for information about the Pines. In a May 31 memo to city commissioners, then-Police Chief Jeff O'Brien wrote that Carpenter had died the previous day of natural causes.

"The next of kin has been notified," O'Brien wrote. "There have been no press inquiries and we have not provided a press release as of this writing."

'WE'RE ALL BEING LABELED'

Christen Perryman is well aware that some local residents are unsympathetic to the plight of the homeless people who live in the Pines — if they think about them at all.

"We're all being labeled," she said. She and other Pines residents said there is one man who drives down 11th Street and twice a day, every day, rolls down his window and yells, "Get a job you (expletive) slobs!"

Perryman said she has held plenty of jobs — working as a waitress, a cashier and a housekeeper. She said she couldn't work while living in the Pines because she had to take care of her baby. In turn, her husband also decided not to take a job because he felt he had to watch over his family 24/7 to protect them from the predators who live in the Pines.

Without incomes, the Perrymans had to rely on the generosity of strangers and fellow campers, including Pines resident Michael Elkins, who receives an SSI check from the Social Security Administration and donates a portion of it to the Perryman family.

"These guys are a handful, but I love them to death," Elkins said, referring to the Perryman children. "I figure it's better spending it on them than drinking it all."

Asked how she would respond to people who are inclined to criticize her choices in life, Christen Perryman said: "Not everybody's the same. God made us all different. You can be the richest person and you can fall. If they (critics) sat with us for 48 hours, they would see that life is not easy here."

An aura of incipient violence permeates the Pines. Otherwise, the most pervasive problem that its residents must contend with are sanitation issues akin to a refugee camp. Although city officials have staged a dumpster on 11th Street for the homeless to use, there are no portable toilets or nearby public restrooms.

During a news conference last month that took place to discuss measures the city has taken to address problems at the Pines, city officials said they were forced to remove the porta-potties because they were being vandalized and the companies that had provided them refused to service them any longer.

In the absence of porta-potties and washing facilities, a few residents have erected portable toilet tents and solar showers. Most, however, resort to far cruder methods when nature calls, befouling the woods and the wetlands surrounding nearby Kid's Creek. Asked where he goes to the bathroom, one resident pointed and said, "That bush right over there."

The absence of porta-potties in the Pines distressed Christen Perryman. She questioned why everyone has to suffer because one person, or a few people, committed vandalism. But she made do as best she could. The Perrymans' three-tent compound included a small "poop tent" that was primarily for their children. She hated it. "Who wants to hold a cup or a plastic bag over your children's areas?" she said. But that's what she did, disposing of the waste in the dumpster.

Asked where the family bathed, Perryman said they would shower at the Central United Methodist Church on Cass Street, or she would use water from a 5-gallon jug to wash the children at their campsite. "It's hard to keep them clean here," she said.

LOCALS OR 'HOMELESS VACATIONERS'?

A nagging perception among some city residents is that, because it is a wealthy, liberal and caring community, Traverse City has attracted homeless people from downstate and other states.

According to that narrative, life in the Pines is fairly cushy.

"I certainly know that the homeless issue is not an easy fix and will not be cheap," Dr. David Steffey, a Munson Medical Center radiologist, wrote to city commissioners in June. "Working in the emergency room, I have spoken to many of these 'homeless' people. The majority of these people are not full-time Traverse City-based homeless people. They are truly homeless vacationers.

"I have been told many times by these ER homeless patients that Traverse City is a great place for them because they don't get hassled, there are great tent cities, readily available food, showers, and laundry facilities. 'It is a great summer vacation for us.' "

Steffey, who did not respond to requests for comment, expressed frustration in his email to the commissioners that commercial property he owns on 14th Street has been vandalized by homeless people who live in the Pines. He wrote that he has had to remove human feces, repair damaged outside electrical devices and water faucets, and has had "to usher off drunk and passed-out people from my property that are scaring my tenants ... and, frankly, myself."

Asked about Steffey's assertion, Halladay-Schmandt, the director of the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness, said the claim that a majority — or even a significant number — of the people who are living in the Pines are from downstate or out of state is wrong.

Michigan maintains a database called the Homeless Management Information System, which attempts to track every homeless person living in the state. The coalition contributes data collected in Grand Traverse, Antrim, Benzie, Leelanau and Kalkaska counties. Halladay-Schmandt said that database shows that 97% of the people who are homeless — including the 85 people who are living in the Pines — are locals.

"We do an extraordinary amount of work to track everybody out there," she said.

Ryan Hannon, Goodwill Northern Michigan's community engagement officer and an advocate for housing for the homeless, also said it's a persistent myth that many homeless people want to be homeless.

"Homelessness is a terrible, dangerous existence," he said. "People don't want to live that way."

CRACKING DOWN

In recent months, city officials have taken several steps intended to reduce violence and increase safety in the Pines. They have banned alcohol; added lighting and security cameras; and trimmed trees to make the camp sites more visible and accessible to law enforcement and fire officials in the event of an emergency.

They also pushed all of the homeless people who were camping on the north side of 11th Street, along the Women's Trail, to the Men's Trail on the south side of the street.

As a result, the Women's Trail is now a hellscape of water-logged camping gear, tattered pillows and blankets, and a staggering amount of trash.

But, as the weather has turned colder, perhaps none of the measures the city has taken have upset the people living in the Pines more than the fire ban that was instituted by Fire Chief Jim Tuller.

Tuller said the risk of a catastrophic fire was high because people were burning the dry and extremely flammable lower limbs of trees in the Pines. Consequently, the city spent $15,250 to hire a tree service to lop off the bottom 5 feet of pine branches along the Men's Trail.

Several Pines residents said they don't think the ban is reasonable because it even applies to well-tended fires made in metal receptacles.

"We're not trying to burn the forest down," Christen Perryman said Tuesday as she shivered in the cold, light rain. "All we're trying to do is stay warm."

Perryman said she also doesn't understand why the Goodwill Inn, which has 11 suites for families, is the only shelter in Traverse City that will take families. She had been on a waiting list for one of the suites since her family moved into the Pines.

Safe Harbor, an 83-bed seasonal homeless shelter, opened today, but it doesn't take families.

"Why can't you take one of these abandoned buildings and make it a homeless shelter?" Perryman asked. "Why is it that Traverse City has all this money and only one shelter that families can go to?"

In coming weeks, the Record-Eagle will examine how and why homelessness has increased in Traverse City and what city officials and area non-profit organizations are doing to provide shelter and supportive services for homeless people.